A project I have to deal with...

Sick and twisted at the Values Voters Summit, taking the sweet home out of Alabama (play that dead band's song), and if everybody had a notion (bike + surfboard = surfari)...

I tend to put things off...

One of the things I've been putting off is coming to a serious decision about what to do about anti-fouling for "So It Goes".

Part of the problem is there has been a shift here in the Caribbean in that yards where you can haul and do your own work are beginning to disappear. Not that the yards are going anywhere but simply that more and more yards will only let their employees work on boats and that brings the cost of hauling and new paint into a somewhat problematic zone. Problematic on two levels, one being that it elevates the cost to the pain threshold and two, that the quality of labor (although expensive as it is) is less than I'm comfortable with... What to do?

The paint we currently use gives us two years or so of good performance but now that we are at the ass end of the cycle we are into dive & scrape anti-fouling mode. As it happens, no small number of frugal cruisers have done very well doing the dive & scrape two step, not bothering with anti-fouling paint at all... The trick to it is simply to do it regularly and be in water that is warm enough that a couple of hours a week scraping critters will not turn you blue in the process.

As paints go, I'm not overly impressed with the high cost anti-foulings which really do not seem to work any better than the lower cost ones... When you think about it, the folks selling anti-fouling paint don't really want to make more effective and longer lasting paint they simply need to sell you on the idea that they do and logic would suggest that a longer lasting and more effective anti-fouling paint would cut deeply into some folks profits... Something you may want to keep in mind next time you are in the paint aisle of your local chandlers.

I have been looking at CopperCoat as, in theory, it seems a sensible approach. The idea of ten years (or more) effective lifespan with all its attendant savings (fewer haul outs, etc) makes it quite a bit cheaper than even the cheapest of cheapseats anti-foulings but someone I know has had less than a happy experience so, for better or worse, it most certainly is not on the possible list any longer.

Anyone who knows me knows (I do go on about it) that I have had excellent experience with a no longer available electronic anti-fouling system. I keep looking for a reasonable facsimile but the search has so far remained fruitless. I have found a very inexpensive source for a type of electronic anti-fouling that I will be trying, but as it's very different from the one we had such a good experience with, I am less sure of its results... That said, being that the electronic anti-fouling I've found is cheaper than a single gallon of name brand anti-fouling paint (batteries not included of course) so, even if it works just to slow down fouling, it still looks like a good investment.

But more about that tomorrow...

Listening to Rod Stewart

So it goes...